


Turn of Winter

by Vaznetti



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the 1565 siege of Malta, Jerott Blythe returns to Scotland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn of Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wildestranger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildestranger/gifts).



Snow had fallen overnight. At first the hooves of Jerott Blythe's horse crunched in it as she trotted along, but as the sun rose higher snow and mud began to mix; the low clouds promised rain and dulled the world: grey earth, grey sky, grey trees. One low hill blended into the next, the landscape melting into dreamscape. For a tired man on a tired horse, it was soothing enough to lull him nearly to sleep.

Then the sun broke through for a moment and a murder of crows started up from a cluster of rowan trees along the road. Black wings, red berries. Jerott started back into time, pulling up on the reins and shocking the horse beneath him, who skittered and skidded along the sloppy hill. Momentum took them, and the cawing of the birds; the horse nearly went down on her knees and Jerott thought he heard cannon-shot over the beating wings of the crows. His mare slowed as she began to stagger up the other side of the valley, breath coming in clouds from her nostrils, and he forced himself to lean forward to stroke her neck and whisper to her until his heart stopped pounding and all he heard was his voice and her breath. When she stopped he slid off to check her legs. They walked together back to the path.

As the day wore on it grew cold and the ground became more slippery; Jerott and the mare walked alongside each other into the darkness. It was later than he had hoped when he came to the large house by the side of the lake, and he stood in the dark, uncertain, looking up at the silent square tower looming beyond the gate. Perhaps they were gone; perhaps he should turn and leave. He swung back up onto the mare, who stepped sideways in protest. Then the gate was flung open and two grooms rushed out to take his mare's reins and a slender form stood, outlined in torchlight streaming from the house beyond. 

"Jerott," a voice said, the voice he remembered. "Are you planning to come in, or have we acquired an equestrian statue for our courtyard?"

"Francis," Jerott said, more an exhalation than a word, and swung back down. Two steps forward and he stumbled on the pavings stones his feet couldn't feel.

Suddenly Francis was at his side, "You're injured," he said, and something else about going inside, but what Jerott heard was the same voice, from another time. _"You are hurt!"_ she had said in Mehedia, shifting suddenly from mockery to outrage. None of it real. Perhaps none of it had ever been real.

He did his best to focus on where he was now, on the man in front of him. "I'm fine," he said.

"You're frozen." Francis called to one of the grooms and together they supported him across the court and into the house beyond. "You idiot. You might have written: if Danny hadn't we wouldn't have known where you were."

"I'm fine," Jerott said again, as they lowered him onto a bench and closed the door, and Francis bent down to unbuckle his boots and unwrap his feet. 

" _Freeze in January, amputate in June._ But don't worry. There's a new surgeon visiting at Biggar who's absolutely mad for amputations."

"No," Jerott said tightly.

Francis looked up and met his eyes. "No," he agreed. "Come on. We'll get you warmer upstairs."

His feet wouldn't quite bear his weight. Francis and the other men half carried him up the stairs, to a panelled room and a bed piled high with coverlets; his wet clothes were removed and his feet were wrapped in wool. The warmth made it hard to stay awake, and that and the hum of low voices carried him off to sleep.

*

It was dark when his eyes opened next, and he thrashed against something holding him down until a voice he knew told him to rest, told him he was safe, told him he had nothing to fear. _Marthe_ , he said, and slept again.

He could hear her singing somewhere in the house when he woke next, as she had so often in their tall house in Lyons, when he was on a different floor, the music seeping up through the boards; now he lay still, as he had stood then, and let the song draw him back down to the darkness with her. 

_She stood with her back to him in a room he remembered, a room they shared once, combing her hair and singing._ "Souvent Espoir chacun contente, excepté moy, povre dolente, qui nuit et jour suis en douleur en la forest de longue attente…" _He rose from the bed and went to stand behind her, but in his arms she twisted away and he was left with handfuls of embroidered silk. He let it fall to the ground -- it sounded like tiny brass bells -- and tried to follow her, up and down a thousand narrow flights of stairs._

His legs ached when he woke. Philippa was sitting by his bed, a piece of fine lawn in her hands. He sighed with relief to see her and closed his eyes again.

*

Jerott snapped awake with the awareness that something was moving outside in the room, beyond the bedcurtains. His hands flailed over the coverlet, looking for his sword, before he remembered that it was with his clothes, that he was in Scotland, in Francis' house, that the Turk had not made it through the walls in the night.

Now that he knew where he was, his head felt clearer than it had in days. He sat up cautiously. Weak light trickled through a crack in the curtains, followed by small fingers and a fair head. "I have a horse," it said. "Would you like to see him?"

"I don't--" Jerott began.

"Here he is." The child held up a wooden figure, painted brown with a silver and blue saddle and reins, and brown wooden wheels. "His name is Pony."

"Good morning, Pony," Jerott said. He couldn't remember the last time he'd spoken to a child; in Malta they had been silent or crying, terrified of the constant bombardment, and he had spoken most often to their mothers, doing his best to reassure them that de Valette would not abandon the town, that the knights would stay on the walls to guard them. Boys not much bigger than this one had run along the battlements with powder and shot, but they hadn't been children.

"My name is Robin. I'm five years old."

"Good morning, Robin," Jerott said. There was nothing in this open face to remind him of any child he'd seen before, but his throat still felt thick. He was spared the need to say anything more when the door opened.

"Robin?" a voice called. "Master Robin, are you in there?"

The boy grinned and pressed the horse into Jerott's hands, before wriggling backward out of the bed. "He wasn't sleeping."

"Mistress Philippa told you not to bother him, Robin."

"I needed to give him Pony," Robin said as the door closed on their argument.

Jerott pushed the bedcurtains open; the sun was as high as it was likely to get in midwinter, he thought. Someone had taken the clothes from his pack and put them into a chest. He dressed and reached for his sword, but after a moment left it on top of the chest and went to look for Francis, taking the little horse with him.

* 

He found Philippa first, sitting in a light-filled room with an account book open on the table before her. She looked up and smiled. "Jerott! Come in and sit down. Let me call for some food for you." An infant lay swaddled in a cradle next to her, its small face screwed up and mouth puckered. "A girl," Philippa said as she stood. "Mary. They're all called Mary." She shooed him into a seat and went to the door to call for a maid.

"Are they?" Jerott asked, as the baby was whisked off by a nurse and food was put on the table before him, a quarter of a capon, some bread and a mug of small beer.

"They are around here," Philippa said. "I hear you've already met Robin."

"He seems very charming."

"He's a monster," Philippa said. "I see he tried to give you Pony. Francis has promised him a horse of his own in the spring and he's convinced he'll get it sooner if he can get rid of his toy." She watched him pick at the capon. "Was it very bad in Malta?" He glanced at her. "You spoke in your sleep," she said.

He looked past her to the misty light coming through the glass; he could see the grey roof of the gatehouse and hear a cart grinding its wheels across the courtyard. Beyond that were brown hills patched with white snow and a few twisted trees. "It was unimaginable," he said.

"Danny wrote to us," she said, "to say that you were coming home."

Jerott was silent a moment. Malta, golden and sun-dried, was surely his home, and the warm stone walls of the French Langue in Birgu. As soon as it was rebuilt from the dust, as soon as he could bear the thought of returning there. "What happened to St. Mary's?" he asked idly.

A line appeared in Philippa's forehead. "Didn't he--" and then, "Francis wrote about it to Danny."

The tension in her voice made him sit up a little straighter and stare at her across his abandoned meal. "Danny never mentioned it," he said. "What happened?"

She stood and looked out the window. "Francis is just coming back from the stables. I should go see him." 

Jerott left his breakfast and followed her down into the hall and outside. He wished he'd remembered his cloak when the air hit him, but Francis was standing in his shirtsleeves and breeches by the gate, talking to a cowherd. He turned when Philippa crossed to him and smiled. "A few sheep have gone missing overnight, it seems. Little frosted hoofprints pointed south, before they melted away in the sun." He turned his smile on Jerott. "We won't be gone long. It was almost certainly the Elliots, and we'll have tracked them down by tomorrow."

"Let me go with you," Jerott said.

Francis met Philippa's eyes. "You've just risen from your sickbed, Jerott. We'll never get the apothecary to come back if we let you exhaust yourself into a relapse."

"I'm well enough to ride," Jerott said. "And to fight. I need to... I need to get out of the quiet."

Another glance between Francis and Philippa, and Francis nodded. "I suppose you left your armour in Edinburgh?"

The borrowed breastplate fit him well enough, and the sound of metal and harness and hooves carried him down the road. He assessed almost without conscious thought the men around him: five or six cowherds in leather on tough little ponies, as many older men, and a dozen younger, all in mis-matched armour with swords and hackbuts and pistols of various vintage. It was all clean and well-cared for, he supposed, and they rode in a tidy group, but it could hardly be called professional.

"You've become a farmer," he said to Francis.

"Like Abel, I bring my oblation to the Lord," Francis responded. "But in order to bring it, I do need to keep it out of the hands of the Elliots and their ilk."

"Are the reivers often coming so far north?"

"No," Francis said. "But they're in high spirits this year, against the Scotts and Douglases."

"Why don't you put them down? You had the power once, surely you could raise the troops again, and train them."

"To use against whom? All my neighbours, or only the ones I personally disagree with?"

"Don't pretend you can't tell the difference between an honest man and a reiver, Francis."

"'They have the persuasion,'" Francis said, "'that all property is common by the law of nature, and is therefore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity. ' Who are we to argue with the laws of nature?" He urged his horse along a little faster, to a scout coming back towards their party. There was a brief discussion between the scout and two of the cowherds, and then they all rode on under the bright blue of the sky, south toward the border.

At midday they ate quickly, and were back on their horses when they heard horsemen approaching; they drew up in order on the hillside, but the other riders were Scotts, led by a big grizzled man Francis addressed as Goldielands. Another thing, Jerott thought, that was not quite as it had been.

"They've been tracking Elliots as well, and some of their own cattle," Francis reported back to his men, "and think they have a trail heading toward Teviotdale." He turned back to Jerott. "We'll have to ride hard to reach them before dark; are you up for it?"

"Of course," Jerott said. The air was still invigorating, a brisk wind blowing wisps of cloud over the sky already turning a deeper blue.

"Good," Francis said. "Let's go."

They rode briskly alongside the party of Scotts, and split from them after a few more miles; they would, Francis had explained, enter the dale from both sides, and hope to trap the Elliots and their loot. The clouds to the west were pink and gold when another scout rode back to them. "Well?" Francis asked.

"Aye, they're all there." The man looked up and saw Jerott. "Ye'r not all fauchelt, then?" he asked.

"Archie!" Jerott exclaimed. "I suppose you were the apothecary?"

Francis forestalled their reunion. "Jerott, it appears, has returned to good health. At least I hope so. We'll have to move fast to get there before the Scotts."

"Aye," said Archie. "I saw another group of them, riding in from the north, young Buccleuch right at their head."

"Damnation," Francis said, and drove them forward into the evening darkness. They went fast, and not over-quietly, and as they went over the last rise Jerott spared a moment to worry that he'd spook his mare again when the guns started to go off. The man to his left was carrying a fowling piece so archaic Jerott wouldn't have been surprised if it exploded in his hands.

It didn't. They rode hard down on the Elliots, who were sheltering their stolen sheep and cattle in a small steading just in a fold of the dale. The Scotts had arrived before them, but not long before: they had tried to set the gate on fire and were taking shots at any man who raised his head over the walls. He could hear the lowing of the panicked cattle within the yard, and saw a few men trying to scale the wall to get in. Then the gate opened and the Elliots rode out through the smoke.

They caught some of the Scotts unawares, driving them back and killing at least two that Jerott could see. Then Francis said, "Go," in the clear voice he used when leading soldiers, and the men from Lymond rode straight down the dale and into the Eliotts. He saw another young man go down, and only recognised the sound of the shot afterward, and then he was among the Elliots, tough men in leather on tough and well-trained horses. He parried once and again, and drove his sword through the man in front of him, and then hurried on to stay by Francis, in the thick of the fighting and closest to the Scotts. Archie, he saw, was doing the same. A man thrust a torch into Jerott's face and he ducked down the side of his horse and came back up to hack at him. His sword caught on his opponent's sleeve, pulling them close enough together that he could grab the torch and beat his head with it until he fell back. All the Elliots were falling back, now, racing away to the south with a few of the Scotts in pursuit. A young man next to Francis wheeled his horse as if to follow, but Francis rode to block him and grabbed his reins. The boy raised his chin and pulled them back, and Francis, his face hard, said something Jerott couldn't hear. Then Goldielands was next to them, sending the boy back to where the Scotts and Lymond men were dividing up the cattle.

"Who was that?" Jerott asked Archie.

"Young Buccleuch." And at the confusion in Jerott's face he added. "Will Scott's son, and the current laird."

"But he can't be old enough to..."

"He's sixteen years," Archie said, "and sairly eager to prove himself. Which we'd rather he did without harm to himself."

"Ignore Archie's romantic nonsense," said Francis. "One Scott is interchangeable with another, and this one has already bred a son. You might see him; we'll spend the night at Branxholme."

He wheeled away to oversee the rest of his men. Archie met Jerott's eye and shrugged. "I hear you've had a bit of fighting, too," he said. 

"I've kept busy," Jerott said.

*

The Great Hall at Branxholme had not changed in the fifteen years since Jerott had last seen it, and neither had Janet Beaton its mistress, who came forward to greet them and offered a cheek to Francis and a hand to him. "One of Gabriel's men, I remember," she said.

"Of St. Mary's," Francis corrected her, "and lately a hero of Malta."

It was not, Jerott thought later, precisely a rescue: he was sat at the table, certainly, and made welcome, young Buccleuch to one side and his equally young wife (a Douglas, Francis told him) across from them. And in return he gave them the story they wanted: the heat and the noise, certainly, but not too much about either. Instead he gave them the sacrifice of the garrison at St. Elmo, the bravery of the Grand Master, the defence of Birgu from the final assault. He has a little to say, modestly, about his own role defending the breach there, but nothing about the dust and the smell of the bodies trapped beneath the walls as they fell. Nothing about the screams of men and women, the cries of children, as the Ottoman artillery pounded away at the town. Nothing about the day de Valette had all the prisoners killed, and sent their heads back to the Turk as cannonballs. 

Not, he thought later, that such tactics would do anything but inspire his audience. Francis watched him as he gave the account, but asked no questions when young Buccleuch and Goldielands pressed him for more. And when Jerott, once, lost track of his story and stared blankly into the past, Archie quietly filled his cup with water.

So he was clearheaded the next morning, when they assembled with their horses and their livestock. Francis, as they mounted up, turned back to Janet Beaton. "Don't send Hepburn around to see Richard again."

"Your brother's a grown man, last I saw," she said. "He can choose his own allies by now, surely."

"I don't know what mischief you're planning," he said, "but I want no part of it, and I don't want Richard involved."

"You canna keep your head down forever, Francis Crawford. You've done well, these past years, but it's time now to look to the future."

"What else," Francis said, "do you _think_ I've been doing all this time?" He leaped up on his horse before she could respond, and led his gathered men out the gate and home.

Jerott rode just behind him, thinking. The weather had turned again: it was a cold morning, and clouds were gathering above them, heavy with the promise of snow. The sheep trundled along slowly, and after a few miles Francis spoke briefly to the shepherds and left them behind with some of the men. "Did you stop at Midculter, on your way to us?" he asked Jerott.

"You can go see your brother without using me as an excuse," Jerott said.

"Ah," Francis said. "You were listening, then."

"Who is Hepburn?"

"One of the jackals waiting for a chance at the kill," Francis said. "Janet has taken him on as a project."

They rode a little further. "What happened to St. Mary's?" Jerott asked. "I asked Philippa, but she put me off. Don't tell me there's no need for it now."

"Too much need, rather. But the problem with having a weapon like that is that sooner or later someone would ask you to use it, and you would have to say yes or no. And then it really would be martial law, just as de Seurre foresaw, when we were first formed."

"So instead you'll do nothing? Name your daughter for the Queen and hope that will be enough?"

Francis glanced sidelong at him. "Where is all the fury? The Jerott I knew would have accused me of deserting my post at least once by now."

"The Turks pounded it out if me," Jerott said. "Dragut is dead, you know."

"I hadn't heard," Francis said. "At sea?"

"During the siege. He was hit by one of his own canons, while they were firing on St Elmo."

"No doubt he's looking down on us from Paradise and laughing. He always expected to die on a ship." 

"You liked him," Jerott said. "After everything he did, after everything he did to--"

"He did what he could," Francis said. And then, in response to the anger plain on Jerott's face, "We shared an oar, once."

" _You shared an oar?_ " Jerott said. " _He did what he could?_ Is that what you think people will say of you, when whatever you're afraid of--" He stopped, suddenly.

"There's the rage," Francis said. "Go ahead; I'm sure there's more you'd like to say."

"No," Jerott said, and rode on.

* 

That afternoon, back at the house at Lymond, Jerott followed the sound of the virginals back to the room he had found Philippa in; she was sitting there again, this time at the instrument, and this time with Francis beside her. They played four-handed, the melodies overlapping and reversing, too intricate for Jerott to untangle. He waited at the door until they were done.

"I came to say that I am leaving," he said simply.

Francis rose from the bench. "Jerott, wait."

"I should go back to Malta. They're building something there, building and rebuilding."

"We will do that here," Francis said. "We aren't fighting an enemy like the Turks."

"I know," Jerott said. "You're fighting the past. Yesterday and today... It might have been fifteen years ago. It wasn't the same, but the past hung over all of it."

"Well," Francis said, "I think we all have a little more honesty than we did then."

Jerott paused a moment, then continued. "That's why you haven't rebuilt St Mary's, isn't it? It would be too much. But I don't see how my being here will do anything but drag you backward."

"My God, Jerott, what have you been thinking? I think," he turned slightly, and held out a hand to Philippa, who took it and stood beside him, "I think I know the difference between then and now. No one is going to be confused by your presence here."

"I might be," Jerott said. "I don't even know why I came here, except to see you. Except to say that you were right. It wasn't faith that saved Malta. It wasn't even leadership, although we had that. It was just determination, that's all. It was just that we had to do it."

"And were did that determination come from?" Philippa asked.

"I don't know," Jerott said. "Does it matter?"

"We've come too far," she said, "to doubt that there is something that guides us. I know it doesn't look like much, but we are doing what we must." 

"We can't offer you a great battle," Francis said. "It isn't the forces of light against the forces of darkness, all over again. But we would -- I would-- welcome your help again. As I did before, if you remember."

"I remember that I had to fight to get you to agree."

"I'm not going to hit you until you agree with me this time, Jerott." He smiled ruefully. "We don't have elephants for Archie, or Turks for you. But Hoddim and Guthrie are in Edinburgh, and Adam just across the Border. We have the chance, if we can take it, to build something here.

"And will you take it?" Jerott asked. "Janet Beaton didn't think so."

"Janet and I disagree on practicalities, if not on principles. You said it yourself: leadership isn't enough to save a city, or a nation. We all have a hand in it."

"This isn't my home." Jerott said. "It never has been."

"But it could be," Philippa said, "if you wished it to." And she held out her hand to him, and drew him fully into the room with them.

**Author's Note:**

> James Hepburn is more commonly known by his title, Earl of Bothwell, and as Mary Queen of Scots' second husband.


End file.
